


Love me as I love you

by imsfire



Series: Paths of hurt and darkness [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Illness, attempting to spare someone you love, by running away from them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9826727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: She cannot save herself, but she can save him at least from seeing her like this.





	

“It would appear that the crystal you wear must have concentrated the radiation somehow.  Focussed it.  We still know so little about kyber crystals.  I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you.”

Six months at best.  Her heart weakened irreparably by the radiation from the Death Star’s kyber-powered weapon. 

She can’t cry on the medical droid, it will only see tears as compromising its hygiene protocols.  She lashes her soul back together without speaking, and makes her way as far as her tiny room in the NCO’s quarters before she breaks down.

This is the first time she’s ever known what it is to love as an adult.  The handful of nights she spent with Cassian before he was sent off on assignment have taught her things about herself she had never expected to know.  The cherished sweetness of his embrace, the gentleness and hardness of his body against her, the strength of him inside her; and the tenderness, the vulnerability of admitting to need, exploring each emotion, discovering how much more human one is for no longer being alone.  His kindness, his wish to protect her, his concurrent wish never to see her made less free.  She would be stronger than fate and death for him if she could. 

But fate and death have other ideas. 

Cassian is on the ice-planet, scouting out locations for the planned new base; and she is dying.  She cannot save herself, but she can save him at least from seeing her like this.

She goes to Mon Mothma and demands their old agreement be honoured after all; her freedom, and passage out, in return for the co-operation she gave.  When Cassian returns to Yavin 4 she is long gone.

It takes him five months to track her down, tracing the intertwining paths of Lianna, Kestrel, Tanith, Stardust.  He finds her at last on Lah’mu, in a med centre in a small coastal town.  Her window looks out at the sea, at a bay and a mountainous black island. 

She is as thin as bones, her skin translucent.  With each inhalation, the movement seems to rack her frailty to scraps and tears.  He asks why she came back here and she sighs.  He asks why she left, why she hid, and she sighs again. 

“I didn’t want you to follow me.”

“I love you, Jyn.  You’re my home.”

“This is my home.  Yours is on Yavin; or on Hoth, I suppose, now.”

“No, no, it isn’t.  I know you love me as I love you.  I don’t know why you’re running from the chance of happiness but I know my home is wherever you are.”

“I want you to be free to pledge yourself where you **can** be happy.”

“I’m happy here.  I’m happy with you.  I was so happy, when I came home; and then you weren’t there.  Promise me you won’t leave me again.”

“But – my dear, my love - I can’t.  I will be leaving you very soon.”

“Then I’m never going to leave you.”

She cries and holds him with an unnatural strength, knowing how little time is left; and Cassian cries, holding her.  She’s fragile as a songbird in his hands, but there’s no more singing in her.

Jyn Erso Andor dies a week after her wedding, on Lah’mu, and her ashes are scattered near her childhood home.  The galaxy will find its way to freedom without her. 

Cassian never remarries.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this last drabble is a kind-of translation of one of Violetta's lines from "La Traviata" - "Amami quant'io t'amo..." - and the theme for this one is also kind-of borrowed from the same source.  
> By the way, you can find me on tumblr as imsfire2...


End file.
